Hillary Clinton has opened a "conversation" about what she calls "quarterly capitalism," the perverse incentives that lead corporations to focus on the short-term over the long. Her reforms, however, don't match her rhetoric

Dodd-Frank was an attempt to make sure executives could not profit from cooking the books, but unless the SEC cracks down on accounting fraud, executives still have every incentive to fire up their burners.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the passage of Dodd-Frank, the complicated legislation designed to reform Wall Street after it blew up the economy. With finance still bloated, much more needs to be done.

The Greek debt crisis offers another illustration of Wall Street’s powers of persuasion and predation, although the Street is missing from most accounts. The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs.

Loan sharks, in the form of payday lenders, claim more victims each minute than aquatic sharks do in a year. But unlike the shark attacks you see on Discovery Channel, there are surefire ways to prevent getting bitten.

A petition launched today calls on President Obama and Congress to urge the European Central Bank to support the Greek banking system while negotiations continue toward "a fair agreement" for the Greek people.

Despite the fact that 760 banks were important enough to be bailed out by taxpayers in 2008, the Senate Banking Committee approved legislation that would remove the "too big to fail" designation from all but six.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has issued a stinging 13-page indictment of the leadership of SEC Chair Mary Jo White. The financial lobby howled its outrage, which should tell the rest of us that Warren got it right.

The truth is that payday lenders trap their customers in a vicious cycle of debt. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureauhas begun writing a series of new rules to prevent the worst abuses of the industry.

The repercussions of the latest Justice Department deal with felonious big banks were limited to a few headlines and some scattered protestations. That’s not enough. Our financial system is corrupt by design.

An Inspector General's report outlines how post officies could provide essential services to some 68 million Americans who don't have a bank account or depend on check-cashing and payday lending outfits.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Flash Crash; when the stock market lost almost 9 percent of its value from its opening level, within 5 minutes. The market quick recovered, but the crash revealed its extraordinary instability.

We know what changes we need to make financial markets work better. The key steps aren’t hard. It just takes political courage and a strong demand from the public to complete the unfinished business of financial reform.

This tax season, America’s billionaires are toasting you, the ordinary taxpayer. That’s because you’re the one picking up the tab for our nation’s ailing infrastructure of roads, bridges, and rail transport, among other things.

The Federal Reserve Board is deciding when to raise interest rates. Its decisions will decide if millions of Americans get jobs or pink slips, whether wages rise or stagnate. Workers need a voice in those deliberations.

Workers lose an estimated $17 billion in retirement savings a year because financial advisers have incentives to put their financial interests ahead of their customers'. A proposed regulation would address that.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank law directs the SEC to require public companies to disclose the "pay ratio" between their CEO and median employees. Five years later the SEC still will not do this. Is the SEC simply defying the law?

Presidential aspirants in both parties are talking about saving the middle class. But the middle class can’t be saved unless Wall Street is tamed. The Street’s excesses pose a continuing danger to average Americans.

Activists rallied outside payday lending storefronts in 10 states Tuesday to increase awareness of the lack of protection many states offer individuals against purveyors of short-term, high-interest loans.

For years, conservatives used “wedge issues” to split moderates from progressives. It's time to promote some progressive wedge issues and our best opportunities for both publicity and passage are in states, cities and counties.

The House Democratic Party leadership made a remarkable step forward last week in putting out a proposal for a financial transactions tax. There should be no mistake; this is a really big deal for the financial industry.

The Volcker Rule. The Citigroup Amendment. If you're looking for an easy political ride, 2015 isn't likely to be your year. But if you're looking for challenge and purpose, you'll find more than enough to engage you.

Brilliant people with expertise and a willingness to serve the public is a good thing. It is something we want people to do. But the number of Citigroup and other Wall Street people in high positions of our government matters right now.

Insider trading has also become commonplace in corporate suites, which is one reason CEO pay has skyrocketed. If Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission wanted to reverse this, they could. But they won’t.

No one in the House or Senate would admit to putting it in the bill. No one would say they supported the provision. Yet Wall Street still got their way. What does that say about who runs our government?

Democracy and Rights

Register for Updates

First Name:Last Name:Email:

The seeds of the 2008 financial meltdown were sown in a conservative ideology that worshiped Wall Street deregulation and devalued Main Street needs. We’re fighting for an end to the idea that any financial institution is “too big to fail” and too important to be held accountable for its actions. We want to expand Congress’ post-crash financial reforms to protect the interests of ordinary consumers and small investors, and restore balance to a system that has too often tilted to favor large financial institutions.